“Luna – 25” crashed: experts are sure that it’s too early to give up

How it all began

As if starting from that “extreme” glorious result, Russian scientists began to develop a new project. It began in 2005 with the creation of the Luna-Globe concept, developed at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GEOKHI) under the leadership of the then director of the institute, Eric Galimov, and the head of the Department of Planetary Research and Cosmochemistry, Academician Mikhail Marov.

According to Mikhail Yakovlevich, with whom I had a chance to talk on this topic, after several postponements of the launch of Luna-Glob, which was planned to be launched in 2014, the device was renamed and given a new name – Luna-25. This, alas, did not improve her fate. Rather, vice versa. Starting from that same 2014, its launch was postponed until 2023. According to Marov, this was due to the limited resources allocated to the project. But along with the transfers, science was also emasculated from it. In particular, it was necessary to abandon the penetrators (impact penetrating sensors that penetrate into the ground), they were supposed to, according to the developers, separate from the orbiter and go deep into the regolith in different regions of the Moon to explore its bowels.

In the end, in its final version, Luna-25 was created as an apparatus for practicing a soft landing at the South Pole of an earthly satellite and studying its soil and atmosphere using a number of instruments developed at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Flight

The long-awaited launch day for Luna-25, which was planned for 2019, did come, but in 2023. By this time, the Indians, who, following us, also set their sights on the South Pole, nevertheless launched their Chandrayaan-2 station. This happened in 2019, unfortunately, unsuccessfully – their apparatus, like our station now, crashed on the surface of the satellite. But (!) It was a valuable experience that ISRO (in the Indian Space Research Organization) took into account already when creating a new apparatus, Chandrayaan-3. It was prepared four years later and launched in 2023 almost a month earlier than our first, long-suffering Luna-25. However, due to the technical features of the Indian project, he had to arrive at the “destination” two days later than our device. We were still talking about what an interesting intrigue will unfold on the Moon about who will land first on its South Pole …

Alas, we were neither the first nor the second. I would like to exclaim: “Well, how can it be, because everything went so well at the beginning: and the start, adjustments to the flight path!”. We enjoyed the return of our astronautics to the moon. How we rejoiced at every successful impulse! And the photographs taken with the help of Luna-25 cameras, which the IKI RAS specialists posted on the fourth day of the flight! It was like the birth of a new era, emotions went off scale to tears, and not only among fragile women. I will say this, for many, this return was associated with nothing less than the revival of our country from some strange oblivion, drunken intoxication, which was not characteristic of it before. So, taking this opportunity, I want to say a huge thank you to the specialists of NPO them. Lavochkin, the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Space Systems holding, the Institute for Problems in Mathematics and other organizations, for those few days of admiration for your skills. After all, before you, for 47 years we have not entered the orbit of the Moon on our apparatus, we have not taken photographs of the Earth from a distance of 310 thousand kilometers! Of course, it was like a fairy tale. We kept our fingers crossed, hoping that the most crucial part of the flight, the landing, would pass just like clockwork, but, alas.

It was painful to hear about an error in the formation of the next impulse to decelerate on Saturday, and then – on Sunday – about the fall on the moon and, of course, the “death” of the apparatus. After calling the people involved in the launch, I heard heavy sighs on the other end of the tube …

Open descent orbit

Now I know how to covertly and elegantly say about some or someone’s fall: this is an “open orbit of decline.” According to official information from Roscosmos, on August 19, in accordance with the program, the on-board computer was supposed to give the engine a braking impulse to form its pre-landing elliptical orbit. Ultimately, in order to start landing in periselenium (the lowest point of the circumlunar orbit), the device had to descend to a height of 18 kilometers. Having reached the desired height, the engine was supposed to turn off, as programmed, but … he, alas, did not. As a result, the apparatus, having made several more orbits around the Moon, fell, since neither the accelerometer (a sensor that measures the projection of apparent acceleration) nor its time backup issued a command to the engine to turn off in a timely manner. The orbit of Luna-25, which at that moment was called the “open orbit of descent,” continued to lose altitude until the device fell, becoming an earthly “meteorite” for the Moon. By the way, Roscosmos specialists have not yet reported about his whereabouts. I wonder if we’ll ever find out about it?

“Communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted at about 14.57 Moscow time, the measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the spacecraft and get in touch with it did not produce any results,” Roskosmos said. “According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to a non-calculated orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.”

What could be done

Experts shrug their hands in bewilderment: how could the program fail (it was written at the Lavochkin NPO), when it was repeatedly tested on Earth, and everything seemed to be going fine?

Here, of course, we can say that space technology is a delicate matter, until recently only three countries succeeded in soft landing: the USSR, the USA and China and all that … Of course, the author of one telegram channel correctly noted that our first in the world, a soft landing on the moon in 1966 (the Luna-9 apparatus) turned out only on the 12th attempt. It’s all like that. But the difference between that time and ours is that, starting from the beginning of the 2000s, if we stumble once, we stop trying immediately for 20 years. During this time, generations change and newcomers, as a rule, start anew, with drawings, to reinvent the wheel!

The scientists with whom I spoke told how, when they first came to the enterprise, the old-timers told them “horrors” about the similar to the current deorbit of the 1988 project “Phobos-2”, about the lack of an impulse to leave the earth’s orbit for “Phobos-Grunt” in 2011 and the same tragic fall, only to Earth.

Somehow, about 10 years ago, he worked for the NPO. Lavochkin, candidate of technical sciences Viktor Anokhin told me how, under the former general designer Georgy Babakin, they created one lunar or Venus ship in six months (!) And many of them were successful, “even without an onboard computer”, which did not exist then. You just have to keep working, no matter the setbacks. There is, as it turned out in a conversation with the old guard, even a way to save money when creating spacecraft. Academician Mikhail Marov, a participant and organizer of many interplanetary Soviet missions, shared it with me immediately after the sad news about the “death” of Luna-25:

– In the 60-70s, the heyday of our space industry, when we were going to send another station to the Moon (there were significantly more than 24 of them, taking into account unsuccessful launches – Auth.), We always prepared for flight two identical vehicles with expecting that if the first fails for some reason, we will have time to launch the second one in the same launch window, in a day or two, and not in 20 years. To the current creators of space technology, who are all trying to save money, I would like to remind you that by creating two identical devices at once, you get the second half as cheap as the first. This is more reliable than again investing billions in the creation of new technology, and besides, you do not roll back from your competitors many years ago. It’s a simple truth: a miser always pays twice.

Having become sad and analyzed the current situation, I came to the conclusion that our eternal “Russian tragedy”, which is remembered every time after the unsuccessful launch of an expensive spacecraft, is not due to the fact that we are more stupid or unhappy than others, including our compatriots from the USSR. This is due to the fear that our scientists, after this failure, will again be cut off from funding for decades! It’s like saying goodbye to a cherished dream once and for all every time! Sorry, but this is akin to masochism – isn’t it better to get on the rails of regular and accelerated production of spacecraft, as more successful countries such as China, India or private owner Elon Musk do. Mind you, no one is tearing their hair out because of failures, but simply, having rolled up their sleeves, they continue to work.

And by the way. It is known that each lunar lander costs about 10 billion dollars. If we spread this amount over at least a hundred million of our inhabitants, it will turn out that everyone needs to contribute 10-20 rubles of their hard-earned money. And together we will receive as a result of such crowdfunding just the amount that is needed.

Read also: Academician Mikhail Marov ended up in the Central Clinical Hospital amid the accident with Luna-25